Huntsman doesn’t believe that public funding works with cancer research. “We’ve tried to have public and private partnerships but you know it’s hard to work with a bureaucracy,” he says. According to Huntsman, private research holds scientists accountable. Unlike with government bureaucracy, Huntsman says his researchers are, ”not in a situation where people don’t care about them or have lost them in the shuffle somewhere. We feel that private philanthropy is far more effective and productive.”

According to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, public funding for medical research in the United States has stalled since last year's government shutdown and the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester went into place. The National Institutes of Health took a 5.5% funding cut-- a total of $1.55 billion-- in March 2013 and has seen a 25% decrease in funding since 2003.